Dubai film market to raise visibility of Asian films

PTIAug 31, 2008, 08.44pm IST

DUBAI : In an attempt to promote Asian, Arabic and African films at a global level Dubai Film Festival has launched a platform to simplify the exchange of rights, services and product ownership of audio-visual content.

"Dubai Film Market resulted from the absence of an international content market in the region. It is designed to establish Dubai as the regional centre for trade of content to benefit the rapidly evolving film, media and technology industry at large," said Abdulhamid Juma, chairman DIFF.

The idea is to empower buyers and sellers with industry knowledge and simplify the transaction of content trading, he added.

This is in accordance with DIFF's objective of raising the visibility of world cinema with an emphasis on Arab, Asian and African filmmakers and stimulating regional and international film production and trade, said Juma.

The main highlight of the Dubai Film Market is the introduction of a process to acquire audio-visual content through Cinetech, a digitised film library that will include feature films, documentaries, short films and TV content.

Cinetech will help participants browse and screen through a multitude of film titles. The initial archive will consist of over 200 titles and Cinetech will categorise all available content under different labels.

According to Ziad Yaghi, the director of the Dubai Film Market, Cinetech content will be thoroughly filtered and served to Film Market participants.

"It will provide people involved in the TV, home video and film industries with a networking platform to discover future trends and trade content on a global level," he said.

Dubai Film Market will include all genres of content such as feature films, documentaries, short films and TV content.